


Nights at Vigil's Keep

by The_RyRy



Series: Trust your heart, it will swallow the dark. [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 13:42:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_RyRy/pseuds/The_RyRy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rest of the story after Nathaniel's tale of the beginning of his relationship with Anders in Chapter 3 of "Our Hearts Are Bigger Than We Know".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nights at Vigil's Keep

**Author's Note:**

> Before reading this, you may wish to read Chapter 3 of OHaBtWK (http://archiveofourown.org/works/742121/chapters/1387518).

The darkspawn had taken his bow, and all he had to fight back with was a single arrow. Its point dripped with poison, and he struggled to keep it away from his own skin. The creature's claws swiped at him and he tried to stab it to no avail.

He was going to die.

If he was going to do so, he would do it bravely. He would take out as many of these horrid creatures as he could.

He leapt at the twisted body of the hurlock, his arrow out in front of him aiming for its eye. With a guttural laugh, the hurlock spat at him and swiped, breaking the arrow and sending the poisoned tip right back into his arm.

The pain spread as he was knocked to the floor, and the creature laughed and left him to die.

"No," Nathaniel screamed. "I will _not_ die like this!" But the poison had spread, he couldn't move his arms. The ghost of his father was there, shaking his head in disappointment. Nathaniel scrambled, trying to get up, but his legs were paralyzed and--

_Wake up._

Improbably, Nathaniel felt a cool hand on his chest where there was none. Another ghost?

_You're safe. Wake up._

He thrashed his head from side to side, trying to ignore the poison seeping through his body towards his heart, the mocking laugh of his father--

_Nathaniel._

Nathaniel bolted awake, his spine rigid and a dull pain in his neck. The first thing he saw was a mop of golden hair spilling across his disheveled shirt.

"Anders," he whispered.

"You were having a nightmare," Anders said. He turned, looking up at Nathaniel, his face illuminated by the soft yellow glow of his spell wisp floating in the air above them.

Nathaniel's eyes instinctively went to the corner of the room, looking for the ghosts that lingered at the edges of his nightmares. His father, belt in hand. His mother and her distant stare. His little brother and the mangled corpse of a dead animal.

There were only the shadows thrown by Anders's wisp and the shine of his hair.

Nathaniel exhaled finally.

"No ghosts?" Anders whispered in the dark.

"No," Nathaniel replied, and he wanted to put his arms around Anders and thank him.

He didn't, however. Somehow that seemed too intimate.

* * *

 

In the morning, Anders left with only a smile. As unusual as it was for the mage not to have anything to say, Nathaniel was glad; he didn’t know how to end such an engagement either. Thank him? Embrace him? Fortunately, Anders had removed the need to decide with that smile and quick departure; Nathaniel returned to his quarters and sat for a long time on the edge of the bed, looking out the window at the dawn's light.

What a strange thing it was to share a bed with another and to spend the night so close and yet just sleeping. They had stayed in their clothes, and Nathaniel could scarce believe that Anders's hands hadn't wandered once. He had simply rested, one ear to Nathaniel's chest and one arm draped over him, listening to Nathaniel’s heartbeat.

Anders had chased the ghosts away. The weight of his head on Nathaniel’s chest had been a reminder of where he was and had grounded Nathaniel against the nightmares and the ghosts that haunted his waking moments. Nathaniel put his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes. Should he have held Anders? Put an arm around his shoulders? He had tried to not make it anything more than it was - companionship in the dark of night - but he was entirely unsure about what that was supposed to entail. Being invited into someone’s bed just for the sound of his heartbeat was a strange experience.

Nathaniel ran his hands through his hair. He felt rested, that much was true enough, and he needed to take advantage of the feeling and try to put thoughts of awkward hand positions and Anders out of his mind.

* * *

 

After hours the next night, Nathaniel was in his quarters reading by candlelight when he heard a soft knock at his door.

When he answered, he smiled. "Anders," he said simply.

Anders smiled back awkwardly. "Um," he said, looking around the corridor behind him. "I was just, you know, thinking about who I'd like to bother at this time of night, and you seemed like the least likely to kill me."

Nathaniel laughed. He couldn't help it. "That depends. What are you bothering me about?"

"Would you like to hear a few words about our savior Andraste--"

Nathaniel sighed. "Anders, come inside," he offered, stepping aside from the door. "Don't feel that you have to stand in the hallway."

"Inviting me in, how gentlemanly," Anders teased, but he stepped into the room anyway.

Nathaniel closed the door behind him, noticing that one of Anders's ubiquitous spell wisps had followed him inside. "Is this about the other night?" he dared to ask.

He saw Anders shift his weight from foot to foot, a nervous gesture that he was unused to seeing from the mage. Without turning to face him, Anders answered, "Not so much _about_ it as wondering if maybe, you know, you might be interested in doing it again."

To his mild dismay, Nathaniel's heart leapt inside his chest. "It was a beneficial arrangement," he said tentatively.

Anders turned then, a wry smile on his face. Nathaniel knew that smile was hiding his anxious reaction - that much was clear to him, having seen Anders in full breakdown only recently. "Your place or mine?" he asked, but Nathaniel could see that this question was rhetorical.

He played along anyway. "You're already here," he replied. "Might as well just stay. Should I ply your favor with some wine?"

"My _favor_?" Anders laughed. "I am not some noble woman to be coerced into your bed, Nathaniel."

Unexpectedly, Nathaniel felt stung by the remark. He wondered what he had been expecting with this... this mage, this commoner, this man, this person who was the embodiment of everything that Nathaniel had never been permitted to have in his bed.  

Was he expecting to _seduce_ Anders? Was that what he had been going for? His mind wandered briefly to what the mage would look like without his robes ( _naked,_ he had been assured previously), and he bit back the familiar wonderment about what it would be like to touch--

No. He had to stop.

"As you like," Nathaniel replied.

Anders tensed, as though suddenly realizing what had happened. He turned fully, expression softening, and took a few steps forward until he was within arm's reach of Nathaniel. "Listen, I don't know what I'm doing," he whispered in the dark. "I just know that I can’t sleep, and the other night I felt safe for the first time in ages." He looked away, and Nathaniel wanted to touch his hair and to reassure him that he _was_ safe. "I hoped you would want to..."

In a moment of boldness, Nathaniel put a hand reassuringly on Anders's shoulder. The rough spun cloth of his shirt looked strange on Anders who so obviously preferred finer materials, but Grey Warden supplies were what they were. "Yes," he said finally. "I do. And it helped me as well, so don't fret about it." He restrained himself from touching Anders's cheek.

Anders visibly relaxed. "Thank you," he said.

Nathaniel smiled and patted his shoulder once, then crossed the room to his table and blew out the candle. The wisp lit the room with a dull glow, and he saw Anders taking tentative steps towards the bed.

"Left or right side?" Nathaniel asked as he went to the bed himself, echoing the same question he had asked when he and Anders had bunked together in Amaranthine in a room with a single bed... before any of _this_ had happened.

"Left," Anders replied. That was the same as the last time _this_ had happened, when Nathaniel had struggled with what to do with his arm.

Nathaniel crawled into bed, still wearing his clothes (although he preferred to sleep in his smalls only, but that seemed too intimate). Anders followed and, after Nathaniel rolled onto his back, unceremoniously curled up next to him and put his head on Nathaniel's chest.

Nathaniel felt Anders exhale, felt his body relax as he settled in and draped his arm across Nathaniel's stomach. In response, and as a marked departure from his behavior the time before, Nathaniel wrapped his arm around Anders's back and held him close.

He felt Anders shift his body -- was it to move closer to Nathaniel’s body, or to move away from his arm? Had he presumed too much? "Is this alright?" Nathaniel asked, willing his voice not to tremble.

"More than alright," Anders whispered, and Nathaniel felt his heart leap.

He realized belatedly that Anders must have felt it too.

Sleeping with Anders so close was both amazing and difficult. It was hard to fall asleep with the scent of him so near and all the thoughts that came along with his presence; but when sleep did finally come, it was deep and restful and devoid of dreams.

For Nathaniel, at least, it was that way.

Anders fell to sleep almost immediately, but he was the one plagued by dreams this time. Hours later he trembled and cried out, and Nathaniel held him solidly by the shoulder. Anders clutched him with that one arm around his stomach. Although Nathaniel initially worried that he was crossing a line, he rolled over onto his left side and wrapped his arms around Anders. With one arm under Anders’s neck and the other around his ribs, he held him tight and close with a hand on the back of his head in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.

He didn’t know if Anders wanted this sort of intimacy. He didn’t even know if it would help. But, Nathaniel thought, if he were in Anders’s shoes, he might not mind.

And he didn’t pull away, nor did he resist; rather, Anders buried his face in the cloth of Nathaniel’s shirt as though he was hiding from the world.

Nathaniel did not dare to move or to try any other means of comfort. He wanted to kiss Anders’s forehead or stroke his hair or take his clothes off and help him forget his fears; but he did not move, he just held Anders in his safe position and let him fall to sleep again.

* * *

 

They slept in exactly the same way in the Crown and Lion in Amaranthine, volunteering to share a room when Mahariel asked it of the group.

* * *

When the summer’s heat blasted Vigil’s Keep, Anders lay sweating on Nathaniel’s chest during the night. “Maker’s breath it’s hot,” he complained as he brushed his hair out of his face, leaving it sticking to his forehead.

Nathaniel was inclined to agree, but he didn’t want to give up being so close to Anders -- and it appeared that Anders didn’t want that either.

“You know,” Nathaniel said, “it would be less hot if we were less clothed.”

He felt Anders shift and when he looked down, the mage was looking up at him. “Are you suggesting I take my clothes off?”

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow. “Your powers of perception must be legendary.”

Anders laughed. “A joke, from you of all people. The heat must have gone to my brain.”

“I’m not joking about the clothes,” Nathaniel said, pressing the issue. He was hot too, but he wouldn’t be comfortable with clothes off if Anders wasn’t.

Nathaniel had never seen Anders without _something_ on, at least above his waist. In a military group like this it wasn’t unusual to see your comrades naked, Nathaniel knew -- he had seen more men naked in his lifetime than women -- but somehow, he had never seen Anders. The other man took care to bathe and change clothes in privacy, and when he couldn’t have that, he went through a deliberate set of movements to ensure that he was never exposed.

Nathaniel had noticed. He had been watching Anders even more carefully since they had started sharing these nights together weeks ago.

Had it really been _weeks_ already?

Anders finally whispered, “I don’t want you to see.”

Nathaniel was surprised at that response. “See _what_ , Anders?” He dared to turn on his side to face his bed partner -- not his lover, just someone he slept with, and not even _like that_. “Whatever you’re hiding, I promise it’s okay.”

Anders shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “It’s not okay.”

Nathaniel had learned a few things about patience in his months with the Grey Wardens, and he was prepared to exercise every skill he had gained for Anders’s sake. He wondered what it could be. Some kind of deformity? Anders was so vain that Nathaniel wouldn’t put it past him to be sensitive about a lopsided arse or something of that nature.

He waited a long moment, his hot and sweaty hand on Anders’s shoulder, before he tried, “Can you at least tell me what it is? You don’t have to show me.”

Anders sighed, but he said with words that barely reached Nathaniel’s ears, “It’s my back.”

Nathaniel’s thoughts immediately went to his _own_ back, and how often the others in the Wardens must have seen it. How had he never seen Anders’s back? “What about it?” he dared to ask.

Another sigh was his response. “I was... lashed,” Anders confessed. “Beyond my ability to heal several times, before my Harrowing and after. Every escape attempt, they added ten more to the required number.” He shivered despite the heat, and Nathaniel pulled him close.

Nathaniel took time to process this, and to let Anders calm down. He had heard Anders say he’d escaped half a dozen times. Sixty lashes, at least? It was a wonder that Anders was still alive.

Sixty lashes and a year in solitary confinement. How could he have endured it?

“Anders,” Nathaniel whispered, his breath catching in Anders’s hair. “You don’t have to show me if you don’t want to, but would you be okay if I took mine off at least? It’s bloody hot in here.”

Anders made a small noise like a laugh and nodded, pulling himself away. “See your majestic shoulders? How could I resist?” he teased, and Nathaniel saw right through his anxious smile.

He let Anders go then and sat up. Nathaniel undid the laces at the top of his own shirt and then pulled it off over his head, revealing to Anders his back. Nathaniel didn’t look at it often, but he knew what was there. Scars cris-crossed his back, memories of punishments his father had given with a belt and a lash, as well as a few unfortunate incidents in the Free Marches. Some of those were from a lash, others were from knives, and there was even a raw patch where he had been recently burned in a fire fight with a genlock.

Anders had seen this with  all the times he had healed Nathaniel, most recently after that burn. But here in the quiet of this moment and in the strange intimacy they shared, Nathaniel thought it might help.

It certainly was cooler, anyway.

“These are gifts from my father, mostly,” he explained, sitting with his back turned to Anders. Although it was still hot, he felt less stifled with his shirt off. The air felt good on his skin. “Bad memories, most of them. Not to say yours aren’t as bad, but just that we both wear the marks of our past.”

And possibly our futures, Nathaniel thought, still haunted by the ghost of his father that lived in his very name.

He turned to face Anders, and saw the man gazing at him, a hand held out so close that it was almost touching him. Nathaniel reached out and touched Anders’s hand, lacing their fingers together. He watched Anders’s eyes widen as he did so.

“I’m the last person to judge you for the scars of your past,” he said to Anders, squeezing his hand. “They will not make you any less in my eyes.”

He watched indecision flutter across Anders’s face, and eventually his features hardened with resolve -- the corners of his mouth narrowed, his brow unfurrowed, his eyes opened wider. Anders was so expressive that Nathaniel marveled at the way he was able to communicate so much with so little, and yet how much the man chose to talk.

Anders sat up and removed his tunic in one fluid motion. At last, in the low light of the spell wisp, Nathaniel could see Anders’s body -- he hadn’t realized before this moment that this was what he wanted.

He had known better than to think Anders the stereotypical scrawny mage; from all the nights he had spent holding Anders, he knew that Anders had muscles on him and that he had particular strength in his back. Now he was seeing it before his eyes, and Anders was even more perfect than he imagined. The scars -- the edges of which Nathaniel could see along Anders’s ribs, since his back was facing away -- only added to his beauty.

“Like what you see?” Anders teased, but Nathaniel could tell that he was nervous. Anders had signs -- lowering his chin, choosing to look anywhere but at the person he was speaking to, running his thumb along his forefinger. He was doing them all now.

“Yes,” Nathaniel replied, trying to smile even though Anders seemed shocked by the revelation. He shifted the subject. “Do you think you will be comfortable enough to sleep?”

Anders gaped at him, but eventually managed to close his mouth and nod. Nathaniel stretched out on the bed and Anders lay with him, and this time Nathaniel was not shy about putting his arms around him. Contact with Anders’s skin was intoxicating; Anders’s heart was racing and he seemed to buzz with energy, and Nathaniel could smell something on him. His mana, thrown loose by excitement? Nathaniel didn’t know, but he enjoyed the feeling and tried to put as much of his own skin in contact with Anders’s as he could. Meanwhile, Anders ghosted his fingers up and down Nathaniel’s back. He touched the scars there, and Nathaniel swore his fingers were vibrating as he did so.

Nathaniel tried his best not to touch Anders’s scars in a way that would make him self-conscious, but he did idly stroke Anders’s hair from time to time as they both fell into a light sleep.

* * *

 

Nathaniel woke just before dawn to find Anders staring at him.

He blinked, wondering if there was still sleep in his eyes, but no, Anders was there with his eyes open just... _gazing_.

“Anders?” Nathaniel whispered. “Are you alright?”

“No one has ever done this for me before,” Anders whispered. “Not without wanting something, money or a bounty on my head or to kill someone for them or conjure up some remedy...”

Nathaniel ducked his head to look directly into Anders’s eyes. “I’m not doing this to get something from you,” he said. “You’re my friend, and having you here like this helps me. And it helps you too, I know. So why not?”

“You don’t push,” Anders said. “I expected you to... demand something of me.”

Nathaniel raised his eyebrow. “Like what?”

Anders’s shift in position and the way he looked away said all that Nathaniel needed to know. He was suddenly glad that he hadn’t pushed, hadn’t found the courage to put his arm around Anders’s shoulders; to know that he had expected to have to pay for comfort with his body -- and that he was desperate enough to try anyway -- made a knot of discomfort twist in Nathaniel’s gut. Had Anders really thought so little of him?

Nathaniel supposed that he would have, as well, if he had been outside of his own mind on this. He hadn’t exactly been kind when he and Anders had first met; he had been more like his father, the face of vengeance and hard cruelty that had been the only thing he’d known. It was his only defense mechanism.

He felt like a different man as he gathered Anders into his arms. Now he was not timid about it, nor was he afraid. He felt that fine blonde hair on his cheek and nearly lost his bearings in the sensation of it, cool and silken on his rough skin.

“Anders,” he whispered, “I would never demand, not this, not from you. I know what you’ve been through.”

“You don’t,” Anders whispered.

Nathaniel sighed. “You’re right. But I have a general idea, and I see what it’s done to you. I’ve felt it every night these past weeks.”

Anders shifted and Nathaniel looked down at him, this man with the bright smile and the careless jokes and the wild magic who was suddenly vulnerable in his arms. It would be so easy, he knew, to take advantage. He could not deny that the temptation was there; but unlike other men, perhaps even those whose blood ran in his own veins, Nathaniel could fight it.

He touched Anders’s hair, his fingers naturally falling to gently caress his cheek.

“Do you... not want me at all?” Anders said, his words barely audible.

Nathaniel’s heart jumped. “What gave you that idea?” he said, trying to smile.

Anders smiled back at him, and for once his expression was unguarded. “You just... you haven’t.” He bit his lip. “Anything.”

“I was waiting,” Nathaniel replied, touching Anders’s hair again. It was like silk through his calloused fingertips.

Anders’s voice was tentative and confused. “For what?”

“You,” Nathaniel said. “I don’t think you’ve ever been allowed to do anything on your own terms.” He became nervous as his fingers traced Anders’s jawline. “I want you only if you would choose to give yourself freely. Not because you feel like you owe me, or because you have to, or because you have no other choice.”

Anders did not respond, but he did not move away. Nathaniel’s heart raced in the silence and he felt frozen in place. He waited.

Anders shifted his body to be closer to Nathaniel, placing his nose against Nathaniel’s chest. He was quiet the rest of the night, and Nathaniel realized that Anders might not know how to make a choice or how to give himself freely.

He could be patient.

He held Anders but he did not sleep.

* * *

 

When Nathaniel returned to his quarters the next night, he was surprised to find Anders waiting for him. The mage was leaning against the wall next to his door, arms crossed and looking both impatient and sullen.

“Anders,” Nathaniel said in greeting.

He did not reply.

Nathaniel looked at him, then decided to open the door and go inside anyway. Anders followed him, and Nathaniel closed the door behind them.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Just listen,” Anders said, and Nathaniel noticed that his fists were clenched. “I hate being talked down to. I don’t need some fallen nobleman to tell me that my life has been one sheltered lie after another.”

“Anders--”

“No, _listen_ ,” Anders cut him off. “You don’t know mages. Maybe you think we’re all just grown children with no volition of our own, but they couldn’t beat free will out of me, they couldn’t starve it with loneliness, they couldn’t scare me into submission. My _entire_ life has been me exercising the only choice I had -- the choice to keep my free will.” He was so close to Nathaniel now that Nathaniel could smell something on him, the scent of a mage, the strange electric scent that was peculiar to Anders. He was angry. Nathaniel resisted the urge to grab him by the shoulders and calm him down.

“So,” Anders continued, “when you found me in that hallway, I _chose_ to talk to you even though I was really drunk. If that had been a mistake, I wouldn’t have sought you out the second time or come back all these nights.” He was softening now, his shoulders relaxing and his hands unclenching. “And maybe you’re right, maybe the actual practice of freedom is still a little bit unfamiliar to me, but you don’t need to be a chivalrous knight coming to save me.”

Then, to Nathaniel’s complete and utter surprise, Anders kissed him.

It was hard and fierce and it tasted like electricity. Nathaniel was lost for words or actions -- this was a kiss that was needy and angry and full of a strange fire. This wasn’t like the kisses of courtship with the women his father had set him up with, nor the moments of stolen passion with unnamed courtiers when his father wasn’t looking.

It was... well, it was _Anders_ , with a kiss that was freely given.

And it was over before Nathaniel could react.

Anders was looking at him with his eyebrow raised. “Is that all you’ve got, Howe?”

Nathaniel grinned. “Do you always wear robes?”

Anders laughed and Nathaniel’s heart leapt -- he remembered the casual flirting, _not when I’m naked I don’t_. “Now you’re talking,” Anders answered, and then they were kissing again and pulling each other towards Nathaniel’s bed.

 


End file.
